118 I. C. Russell — Expedition to Mount St. Ellas. 



background of a magnificent ^^icture. Later in the season our 

 tents were pitched at their very bases, and they then revealed 

 their full grandeur an(J fulfilled every promise given by distant 

 views. ' , 



The rugged Hitchcock range bordering the distant margin of 

 the Marvine glacier, like the mountains near at hand and the 

 rocky island on which we stand, is composed of sandstone and 

 shale, but presents one interesting feature, to which I shall direct 

 your attention. The trend of the range is northeast and south- 

 west, but the strata of which it is composed run east and Avest 

 and are inclined northward. As the range is some eight miles 

 long, these conditions would seem to indicate a thickness of many 

 thousands of feet for the rocks of which it is composed ; yet the 

 beds were deposited in horizontal sheets of sand and mud of 

 very late date, as Avill be shown farther on. But' the great 

 apparent thickness of the strata is deceptive: a nearer examina- 

 tion Avould reveal the fact that the rocks have been so greatly 

 crushed that even a hand specimen can scarcely be broken off 

 Avith fresh surfaces. More than this, the black ,shale, exhibiting 

 the greatest amount of crushing, is usually in Avedge-shaped 

 masses, which, in some cases at least, are bordered by what are 

 known as thrust planes, nearly coinciding with the bedding- 

 planes of the strata. The rocks have been fractured and crushed 

 together in such a Avay as to pile fragments of the same layer on 

 top of each other, and thus to increase greatly their apparent 

 thickness. In the elevations before us the thrust planes are 

 tipped northeastAvardly, and it Avould seem that the force that 

 produced them acted from that direction. The apparent thick- 

 ness of the beds has thus been increased many times. What 

 their original thickness was, it is not noAV possible to say. Similar 

 indications of a lateral crushing in the rocks may be found in 

 seA''eral of the mountain spurs between the Hitchcock range and 

 Yakutat bay ; but space Avill not permit me to folloAV this sub- 

 ject further. 



Turning from the mountains, Ave direct our eyes seaward ; but 

 it is a sea of ice that meets our vicAV and not the blue Pacific. 

 Far as the eye can reach ,toAvard the west, toAvard the south, and 

 toward the southeast there is nothing in A'icAV but a vast plateau 

 of ice or barren debris fields resting on ice and concealing it from 

 AdcAV. This is the Malaspina glacier. 



On the border of the ice, just beloAV the cliffs on Avhich Ave 



